Every Website Wants Your Email

I like a good, well-worded online rant like this one from Elizabeth Lopatto about websites plastered all over with popups to sign up or chat.

The web is becoming a miserable experience because some salesbro who is trying to meet his KPIs is doing stuff to marginally increase the number of paying customers. (And you know, the hell with the rest of us!) The more each site tries to create its own little walled garden, the less valuable the open web becomes.

This wasn’t always the case; the web used to be different, less commercial, and more fun.

I remember when people just made stuff for fun — as a gift to other people. It seems like there’s less and less of that spirit remaining, and it’s why the internet sucks now.

I disagree. There is still good stuff out there, but it’s less visible in the sea of rubbish on the web today. There are thousands of blogs, for example, but the means to access blogs, or indie websites, generally, has stayed the same for twenty years. It’s still as cumbersome to follow a blog as it was in 2003. Compare that to the ease with which you’re fed content on any social media platform, and you know why everybody wants your email.